The Depths

What does it mean when we say a teaching, or a person is really 'deep'?

In our mental landscape, we often think of Heaven as the ‘dwelling place’ of Gd. Earth, on the other hand, is the place where Gd is not. Earth is the realm of the mundane. For Chazal, there is another level in this cosmology: the waters from the second day of creation. In the mind of Chazal they are located underneath the Earth, the area known as the ‘Depths’. If the Earth is the mundane, the place that is not Heaven, the Depths are thought of that part of creation farthest from Gd. Sometimes we think of a strong contrast between divine and mundane. The notion of the ‘Depths’ should expand this understanding. The Earth, is midway between the divine realm of the Heavens and the Deep, the place farthest from Gd. The Depths are a deeper, darker place that cries to be brought back close to Gd. In Hebrew the depths are described as an abyss, called the Tehom.

To speak about the topography of the universe in terms of Gd’s presence or location is useless. We are unaccustomed to measuring the known world in anything but empirical measurements -- those that can be observed, tested and verified -- whether they regard physical or social, political or cultural frames of reference. We lack the sensitivity, and often the inclination, to consider any other way of conceiving of the shape of our world. Gd, however one may choose to relate to Gd, is an an infinite being beyond all conception. We cannot imagine a place where Gd ‘is not’. That said, our Sages speak of such a ‘place’—which is also a time and consciousness – so far separated from Gd, that it seems that Gd is not present. Those waters from the second day of creation make up the substance of this place.

This is the place Jonah speaks of from the belly of the great fish: He says “I thought I was driven away out of your sight: Would I ever gaze again upon your holy Temple? The waters closed in over me, the deep engulfed me.”

Human beings have some of the water from the Depths inside of them. It is a famous teaching that human beings are one part earthly, and one part divine. This is what the psalmist meant when he sand “ What is Man that you have been mindful of him, mortal man that you have taken note of him, that you have made him little less than divine and adorned him with glory and majesty”. Indeed, the first human being was brought to life with the breath of Gd. These are the words of Genesis: “The Lord Gd formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” But this understanding misses a key component to the creation of human beings. One verse earlier, the bible describes the world as dry. “but a fountain went up from the earth, and watered the whole surface of the ground.”

Chazal teach that this fountain was the water from the depths, from the second day of creation. Thus human beings are really composed of three not two levels of the creation. They are part earthly, neutral, part divine, in the breath of Gd, and one part from the Depths, the place that is farthest away from Gd, and yearns to return to its source.